Oregon Ballet Theatre engaged Turtledove Clemens at a critical time in the troupe’s history. With its 2015/16 season looming and a new executive team getting up to speed, OBT needed a strategic marketing partner that could think on its feet.

Turtledove sprang into action, providing strategic thinking and collaborating with the OBT executive team and photographer Tatiana Wills to create memorable branding and identity materials, craft eye-catching collateral and enable big savings on the printing of OBT’s season brochure.

Branding

Every season, OBT creates a theme and logo to connect its unique shows. The OBT executive team (Artistic Director Kevin Irving, Executive Director Dennis Buehler and Marketing Director Natasha Kautsky) presented Turtledove with this creative challenge: Develop a theme that emphasizes OBT as Portland’s very own professional ballet company and gives it a local “spin”.

The agency developed OBT/PDX, a theme and logo that quickly and concisely communicated OBT’s local nature. The logo was utilized on all OBT communications and promotional materials throughout the 2015/16 show season.

Collateral

OBT’s 2015/16 season consists of four productions: Amore Italiano, The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, and Beautiful Decay.

Irving had a specific vision in mind for each show’s poster, but needed a way to tie them together. The OBT executive team, Tatiana Wills and Turtledove collaborated and developed a distinctive concept in which shadows create the artistic connection between all four shows. The shadows concept was featured on all season materials, including show posters and the season brochure.

While the first three stellar shows have come and gone, you can still experience Beautiful Decay, which runs April 14-23. Get your tickets here.

Budget Savings

Delivered to all past season ticket holders and handed out throughout the season, the season brochure is a critical tool to promote the shows and OBT. It’s also a significant line item in the troupe’s budget.

Turtledove utilized its long list of trusted vendors and bid out the printing, tabbing and mailing of the brochures to those best suited for the job. By utilizing this process, which reveals the vendor with the best combination of quality and value, Turtledove found a vendor that would provide a high quality product and do so at a 26% savings to OBT.